The reason you don't usually track cost basis for currency conversion is because usually you just spend the money you get after doing the conversion. Knowing that the 5 USD you just spent on ice cream used to be 7.5 CHF and reporting it as a realized gain isn't usually required.
Your situation is different because you are trading currencies for investments and thus reporting them on your taxes. In that situation, you do want to know the change in value of the commodities over time. I don't have a recommendation on average cost booking at this point. Luckily I haven't run into that situation yet ;) On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 10:19 AM 'Patrick Ruckstuhl' via Beancount < beancount@googlegroups.com> wrote: > Hi, > > Thank you very much, I got confused by this: > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dW2vIjaXVJAf9hr7GlZVe3fJOkM-MtlVjvCO1ZpNLmg/edit > (Beancount - Comparison / Differences) > which made me think that currency transactions should never use the cost > functionality. > > It looks like the average cost booking method has also been implemented in > the mean time, so I can do it like this without having to bother about lots > (which I don't care about) > > > 2017-06-01 * > Assets:CHF -30 CHF > Assets:USD 20 USD { 1.5 CHF } > > 2017-07-01 price USD 1.7 CHF > > 2017-08-01 * > Assets:USD -10 USD { * } @ 2 CHF > Assets:CHF 40 CHF > Income:USDTrading > > > > Hi Patrick, > > in order to compute PnL, you need to provide cost instead of price: > > > 2017-06-01 * "Buy USD" > Assets:CHF -30 CHF > Assets:USD 20 USD { 1.5 CHF } > > 2017-07-01 price USD 1.7 CHF > > 2017-08-01 * "Sell USD" > Assets:USD -20 USD { 1.5 CHF } @ 2 CHF > Assets:CHF 40 CHF > Income:PnL > > > This way you could see a realized PnL of (2 CHF - 1.5 CHF) * 10 = 5 CHF > in the account Income:PnL. > > To compute unrealized PnL, you could enable a built-in plugin: > > > plugin "beancount.plugins.unrealized" "Unrealized" > > > This way you could see an unrealized PnL in Assets:CHF:Unrealized. > > > See official documentation for more information: > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WjARst_cSxNE-Lq6JnJ5CC41T3WndEsiMw4d46r2694/edit > > > > 2017-09-18 11:14:22 patrick via Beancount <beancount@googlegroups.com> > <beancount@googlegroups.com>: > > Hi, > > I've now tried to search for this for quite a bit but somehow I'm not finding > the right stuff or maybe not > understanding it right and I hope someone can help me. > > I would like to separate the currency gains from other income and would like > to also differentiate between realized and > unrealized gain. > > Let's take the following example > > 2017-06-01 * "Buy USD" > Assets:CHF -30 CHF > Assets:USD 20 USD @ 1.5 CHF > > 2017-07-01 price USD 1.7 CHF > > 2017-08-01 * "Sell USD" > Assets:USD -20 USD @ 2 CHF > Assets:CHF 40 CHF > > > • On 2017-07-01 I would have an unrealized currency gain of 4 CHF, how > would I see this? > • On 2017-08-02 I would have a realized currency gain of 10 CHF, how would > I set this up to see this as income? > > > One thing I found > washttp://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html > > Which looked quite interesting to me and seems to have a solution for this > but I'm struggling with implementing some of > the details of it. > I think in my case the concept of "adjusted cost base" seems to be the > simplest and make sense. > > So if I understood that correct I would need to do the following: > > 2017-06-01 * > Assets:CHF -30 CHF > Income:USDTrading 30 CHF > Income:USDTrading -20 USD > Assets:USD 20 USD > > 2017-07-01 price BTC 0.30 CHF > > 2017-08-01 * > Assets:USD -20 USD > Income:USDTrading 20 USD > Income:USDTrading -30 CHF > Income:USDTradingRealized -10 CHF > Assets:CHF 40 CHF > > What I get out of this > > • If I take the balance of Income:USDTradingRealized with the current > exchange rate this should reflect my unrealized > gain > > > A couple of things that confuse me > > • This feels somehow "wrong" as I'm no longer using the @ price annotation > and have this price implicit in the > difference between the amounts in one currency going into the USDTrading > and and out of the USDTrading in the other > currency. > • I need to manually calculate the -10 CHF realized gain > • Income:USDTradingRealized could actually be an income or an expense, > depending on current exchange rates > > > Can anyone help me with this or point me in the right direction? > > > Thanks and Regards, > Patrick > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email tobeancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/ > 397c15c6-c5ea-4d9c-917f-60adf03344d4%40googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/5f13874e-ff52-f341-5f5f-ebbac817c978%40ch.tario.org > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/5f13874e-ff52-f341-5f5f-ebbac817c978%40ch.tario.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. 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